I don’t like American football, I don’t even know who won the SuperBowl this year. But I have seen some of the advertising. Because it is a cultural phenomenon that stretches beyond the 110 million fervent Americans watching in their dens and into a global audience.

I have also seen a lot of the post SuperBowl bitching that this year was supposed to be the SocialBowl. Because y’know social is the new world order innit? And Pepsi shipped their SuperBowl budget into the Refresh social cause project last year. And because Old Spice guy did some personalised video responses to Twitter people. Which was, of course, brilliant. So this year we should all be exploiting the FaceSpace in a go big kick ass way. Whoop!

But SuperBowl has 110 million fervent fans watching. Live. Which is a prime opportunity to build your brand and be entertaining in an entertainment medium in the ultimate (if you’re American) sports entertainment date.

Which is what telly does brilliantly.

But still we whine that they missed an opportunity to be social. We even helpfully provide “they could have done this”. Well, some did use social…

VW – they used social media to seed the Vader/Passat ad before the event to raise awareness and ohmygod create BUZZ.

Chrysler – they just did an amazeballs brilliant ad that left you with goosebumps. Oh and most Americans know it’s Chrsyler.com which has the campaign front and centre. It also has a social hub. And it’s as prominent as on facebook.com/Chrysler.

So they did do social after all – they just didn’t shout about it. Because it’s so second nature that we’ll find it if we want more.

If advertising is designed to elicit an emotional response and plant that brand front and centre in your brain then some of the Superbowl ads did it in spades.

If advertising is just meant to be a vehicle to send people to Facebook then a brand ad on SuperBowl Sunday won’t be the answer. Brand awareness and emotional response doesn’t always have to have a social element.

The ads above delivered emotional response in spades and also had a lot of talkability/buzz factor we crave in marketing.

That’s why we need integrated approaches. Different parts of the communications mix do different jobs. You don’t need to tick every single box every single campaign.

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We’ve done this over at DCH Towers. Over the coming year, we’ll be trying to create range of DCH Downloads highlighting the latest trends, interesting information and general stuff that we believe will make a difference to you and your brand.

In this DCH Download, we take a look at the changing way we use the interweb, Facebook’s entry into the geo-location wars, and the new way to make data interesting.

Let us know if you like it and what you’d like to see in a future editions – just email talk@dch.co.uk or get in touch with me here.

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In amongst all the frenzied reporting about who out-tweeted who at the World Cup, what’s really caught my eye is who won out when it came to the brand association with football. Any student of marketing will tell you that branding is about the long-term and this is borne out by the Engage Research but with some interesting results.

What’s always interesting as a marketer is to observe the official brands who have spent obscene amounts of money sponsoring the World Cup (and by default seemed to have 30s and pitch side advertising everywhere) versus those who didn’t and either go big of their own accord or act in a smarter, more incisive way. And then there are those that just stick “footy” in the headline as a lazy way to jump on the bandwagon.

Such is the massive viewing of live games at the World Cup – and not just England – that sponsorship does guarantee reach. But, as we all know, times have changed and reach no longer guarantees brand engagement, talkability and sales. Who wants to drink Budweiser when watching football? Clearly other people agree and Carlsberg’s long term association with that bunch of players who looked like they never met each other (aka England) has clearly worked from the research results. Although a stunt can get cut-through as Bavaria beer demonstrated with hot girls in mini dresses.

Sky were possibly the biggest winners as despite not covering any game they had great positive association with the tournament. As a big fan of Sky’s Premiership coverage, having to watch the lame efforts of the BBC (smug Hansen et al) and ITV (Chiles trying to cheer up Townsend and Davids) makes you appreciate the professionalism of the Sky team and how it enhances the viewing experience.

This time around we saw unofficial brands such as Carlsberg and Nike stealing the early momentum from official brands. Nike’s Write the Future was apparently one of the biggest ad buys ever on Facebook and received gushing praise from all quarters despite none of the stars in the ad actually writing the future. I hope Wayne is enjoying his caravan.

Carlsberg’s Team Talk eschewed the glitz and glamour of Nike and is rooted in the heartfelt passion for the game. Not only a soul-stirring ad if you’re an Englishman – I dare you not to feel any national pride and choking at the “For Bobby” moment – but deepened the engagement through a You Tube channel enabling you to create your own team talk or see other iconic celebrities delivering their own team talk. And they had a lion too. Budweiser didn’t have a lion.

I really didn’t understand the Sure last 8 sweepstakes. Buy a can (so already I have to impart money before enjoying), enter a code (how old fashioned) and then if my team (I don’t get to choose) enters the last 8 (who cares – it’s all about the winning), I may win something between £5 and £50 (Wooh! Big money!). I think I’d rater spend the money I would have spent on the deodorant on Carlsberg. They have lions.

But my favourite World Cup campaign had to be Panini’s virtual sticker album. The inexplicable desire to collect every team member from England’s utterly useless Rooney to Chile’s playmaker Jaime Valdes is insatiable. As a child this consumed every single penny of pocket money and drove my parents mad. Now, as an (alleged) adult, it had the capacity to do the exact same thing. But online. So I could do it when I was at work. And the playground swapsies are still there – digitally! It’s just brilliant. All it needed to make it uber special was a lion.

Some people ask what’s the point of Twitter? For me it’s part information source, part staying in touch with friends and colleagues and part sharing bits of my life. I’ve found these things of late, I thought you might like them too…

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Recently at DCH, we were asked to comment on the new London Olympic 2012 mascots. My summation made it into the article but thought it worthwhile sharing our fuller thoughts on the brand issue raised.

The classic approach to a brand is to comprise identity, performance and behaviour. In these social times, reputation is now an intrinsic part of the brand dynamic. And at the core of a brand should be two things: compelling and true. Without this, a brand is just bland. What isn’t there is “must appeal to every man and his dog” because as we all know, design by committee designs to the lowest common denominator.

Yes, the 2012 Olympic logo was quite offensive, especially in the day glow colours but we’ve all grown used to it a few years on. Olympics, much like World Cups, are not exactly renowned for having logos or mascots that stand the test of time. But they’re not meant to. They have a finite life span so they have to hit the sweet spot of being current now and in 2-5 years. No mean feat when you consider that most futurologists believe can’t predict anything beyond 3 years out.

So poor old Wenlock and Mandeville were always going to divide; especially because it’s a GB Olympics so in essence, we all “own” it. I quite like the one-eyed little sportsters because they’re different; they have a bit of Sonic the Hedgehog and a smattering of the Vauxhall C’Mons. They are compelling and true to the Games. They may have upset people in ad land but who cares? And let’s be honest, why are we getting ourselves in such a state about two mascots. They won’t stop us winning medals at the Games, that’s down to athletes, coaches, infrastructure, training facilities, investment and raw passion and talent.

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An excellent guide on how brands can utilise the recent changes in Facebook to get deeper engagement and social connection with their consumers. The kind of content stuff agencies should be producing. From US agency The Advance Guard.

What is a surprise is that You Tube tops out the coolest online brands, beating Google. No room for Twitter which in my mind has a cooler cache than You Tube and is certainly being discussed and toyed with more by the cool kids in town. Or maybe this survey reflects the real world rather than the bizarre digital world I inhabit? And is Wikipedia really cool or just really good at providing information? Here’s the full article on Brand Republic and the Top 10 online brands below. Any builds?

While we’re talking social media examples, here’s a deck I pulled together for our online PR agency, headstream about the importance of online PR. Included toward the back are some examples of shockers (inc. Sony PSPS a la Jaffe above) and also some good ones including an antidote to the Starbucks slam in the video above.

…we want to try and create an online marketing community and bring as much inspiration as possible to marketers and everybody in the marketing, advertising and publishing business, whether they are marketers, designers or developers.

The ambition is great. Here’s the site where it will come to life. In a bit of second album syndrome, the video itself is not quite as compelling as the original but then it’s just not about the movie this time. But it still has some amusing anecdotes that we’ve all suffered as digital marketers fighting the good fight.